How to disappear completely

Stills 04: Manila

howtodisappearcompletelyandneverbefound — Sun, 12 Jun 2011 16:45:03 +0000

Camera: Holga
Film: KODAK PROFESSIONAL EKTACHROME Film E100VS
Developer: Cross Processed in C41
Location: Manila, Philippines

Stills 03: Turkey

howtodisappearcompletelyandneverbefound — Sun, 12 Jun 2011 16:30:21 +0000

Camera: Nikon F4, 35mm f/2 AF
Film: KODAK TMax 400
Developer: Kodak D76
Location: Istanbul, Turkey

Stills 02: Four

howtodisappearcompletelyandneverbefound — Sun, 12 Jun 2011 16:21:31 +0000

Camera: Holga
Film: KODAK PROFESSIONAL EKTACHROME Film E100VS
Developer: Cross Processed in C41
Location: South Super Highway, Philippines

Still 01: Singapura

howtodisappearcompletelyandneverbefound — Sun, 12 Jun 2011 16:14:57 +0000

A segment of time when I was on Singapore.

This was the first few rolls on my TLR, the loading was not right hence the frame lines where not aligned. The Stills where incoherent, unrelated and unbalanced much like how I was when I was there. And no theme was applied to pull the Stills together except for the music in the background that somehow gives direction of indirection.

An ode to Jim Jarmusch

Camera: Mamiya C220
Film: Kodak TRI-x
Developer: Kodak D-76
Location: Singapore

Photographic Essay 06: Everyone has a voice, but not everyone should be heard

howtodisappearcompletelyandneverbefound — Fri, 19 Nov 2010 17:28:32 +0000

Since my last essay last December January 2010 (Watchtower), I have not picked up my camera. Sure I had to readjust my way into a new city, as I had just transferred from a metropolis to another. One of the main reason is of course time, especially in a place as competitive and as fast paced as the one I am living in right now.
Before that hiatus, I was even trying to shake things up by trying to change gears and see if that would bring newfound interest in the hobby but to no avail. Since shifting to film I have always been against instant cameras with instant gratifications AKA Digital Camera. How people easily brandishing the camera like just another trendy accessory. Opting for a more difficult and challenging route, but a much more rewarding result in our view anyway.
In that journey I met like-minded individuals that share the same passion or more in keeping the passion for this type of photography alive. Lomo would be another enemy but that would be for another day.
So when our company set out to tour the province of Kyushu in Japan, I instinctual packed my Mamiya C220, which has been gathering dust in my closet. After Five days and four nights I came home with one roll of exposed 120 film, not a great sign on my dwindling interest in the hobby. But I did manage to carry with me my iphone with the Hipstamatic Application (http://hipstamaticapp.com/) wherever I go, warranting some Thirty-Seven images and twelve of those I will share in this essay. Yes it’s a digital application that simulates the analog experience using your portable phone. Yes it is indeed cheating those that you have preceded. Yes it is not considered photography in some avenues. And yes not everyone with a camera, digital camera, or phone camera can consider himself or herself a Photographer. I have not in any way claim or will claim that I am a photographer, so just to clear that up.
I believe this makes the title of the essay relevant when you look from this point of view. Back to the visual diary.
An essay without story, more of an opinion on what was felt when I was there. There was a certain melancholy in the atmosphere, how the people walk past each other without even giving a glance or acknowledgement of the encounter. Kyushu was scenic all right; yes I did enjoy the trip though I wasn’t able to score vinyl on the trip (more on that later). It was a fruitful one, as with all the trips that I have been. Being able to get a glimpse or even experience a foreign culture in a foreign land is always a beautiful experience.

The Streets of Nagasaki

Unfortunately not the famous bullet train

Kumamoto Sea Gulls

Udo Shrine, Miyazaki City. This took almost five hours of grueling bus ride a real painful experience

Male guests have to throw this using they’re left hand I got one inside the Ochichi- Iwa Rocks

Tenmon-Kan District

Mt. Aso

Tatami Mats, Shabu Shabu

Kumamoto Castle

Traditional Brownies at Suizenji-Koen Garden

Juke Records, Tenjin
Looked promising enough when I first stepped into it. Real packed with rare soul and funk unfortunately I was looking for Jazz records. I was tempted to pick up a clean copy of a Bobby Enriquez album and a few more Free Jazz joint. Held it up and just moved away. Not worth bringing it all the way back home. Tried to go to a few more shops but having limited time I just opted to go back to the meeting point. Not a great time.

JBL Bookshelf speakers

In the end its not about what camera you are using….

Camera: Iphone 4, Hipstamatic Application
Film: NA
Developer: NA
Location: Kyushu, Japan

Photographic Essay 01: And in the END the love you get is equal to the love you give

howtodisappearcompletelyandneverbefound — Thu, 06 May 2010 06:15:52 +0000

All I see are dark grey clouds in the distance,
moving closer every hour
so then you asked “ Is there something wrong?”
I said “ Damn right there is, but we can’t talk about it now…”

-Ben Gibbard, Tiny Vessels

The photographic essay is a visual study, a penetration into my innermost psychological crevices. After being uprooted for two plus years, home is not where it used to be.
The feeling of alienation around the people that you love, and being alone with everybody.
Now only the texture of memories remain to connect me to the place that used to be… it’s my break up poem for all the things that used to endear me.

Camera: Nikon F4
Film: Kodak TMAX 400, TMAX 3200
Developer: Kodak D-76
Location: Puerto Princesa, Palawan

Photographic Essay 02: Typologies

howtodisappearcompletelyandneverbefound — Thu, 06 May 2010 06:14:42 +0000

‘We now live in a culture so saturated with media imagery and media models of how people live, that our idea of how one lives one’s life of who one is made up of that kind of media myth and in a sense it negates the idea of portraiture, the idea of that you can dress up and go to a studio and somehow reveal your strength of character or your inherent humanity or whatever… you don’t have any inherent humanity in the post modernist analysis of things. We are all these composites of myths and narratives written by other people…’

Excerpts from the Genius of Photograhy (BBC)
Colin Westerbeck in Postmodernism in Photography

The portraits where borne out of me being bored to my wits. Frustrated on not being able to string a thought or a narrative to the photographs that I was taking. I turned to taking portraits when we arrived in Bursa, the green bastion of Turkey. Coincidentally it was here that we met Mahir a local from Istanbul, he served as my translator while doing this series. Fortunately the locals of Bursa were warmer and much more welcoming. Thus began my journey to the unexpected.

On this day alone, I was able to capture almost 60 portraits and then factoring in the people that didn’t respond positively and you can imagine how much connection I made in this space of time. I was blessed that they found me interesting enough for them to let me take they’re portrait.

The portraits where all taken with a telephoto lens, in the same approximate distance. I wanted the portraits to stand on they’re own, isolated, making them much more distilled so the resulting images became more like objects when strung together. The arrangements of the images were not planned to put the focus not on the sequencing, and other technicalities, but on the portraits themselves creating a document on typology…

Camera: Nikon F4
Film: Kodak TMAX 400
Developer: Kodak D-76
Location: Bursa, Turkey

‘The only people who see the whole picture, are the ones who steps out of the frame’

Photographic Essay 03: Mapping Your Existence

howtodisappearcompletelyandneverbefound — Thu, 06 May 2010 04:33:03 +0000

My memories of you are fragmented
Incomplete
Haphazard, and irrelevant
You look much more mysterious and surprising

This is how I see you in my eyes
This is how I see you in my memory

Camera: Nikon F4
Film: Kodak TMAX 400
Developer: Kodak D-76
Location: In my Head

Photographic Essay 04: dxb

howtodisappearcompletelyandneverbefound — Tue, 30 Mar 2010 10:37:40 +0000

where there is despair, hope; 
where there is darkness, light; 
and where there is sadness, joy.
- St. Francis of Assisi

When I first stepped in this country everything was so vibrant, opportunistic, and exciting. Everyone living here was eager and proud to see the developments of this small emirate in such a break neck speed. I could not quite contain what was happening around me. Everything was a commodity, the people, the language, and the spaces. Parking spaces were lively, fought for, and were even a place to take your pictures beside the expensive cars that rests in it. I was here through the excess, parking lots where always full. Nowadays we are going through simplification, we are all together shredding out the unnecessary. The images presented in this essay reflect the changing tide here in Dubai.

Some would ask why take photographs of parking lots, roads, and places that don’t have life. Some would term non-places- in this jargon it means spaces not fit for habitation. The challenge of taking portraits of spaces, is making those wide expanse of emptiness seem interesting and in my case trying to achieve the sublime in nothingness.

This prose I leave as i bid adieu to my foster home for three years knowing that there is hope in despair.

1307: 21 January 2010

Camera: Mamiya C220
Film: Ilford Delta 100, Kodak Tri X
Developer: Kodak D-76
Location: Dubai, UAE

Photographic Essay 05: Watchtower

howtodisappearcompletelyandneverbefound — Tue, 30 Mar 2010 07:43:16 +0000

WATCHTOWER

When I decided to make a photographic essay about my Father, I wanted to pay respect and say thank you to all the things that he has done for us. I was envisioning an essay without the typical photographic documents, of fake poses and fake smiles. I wanted to experience being him, followed him around for a few weeks sporadically from December thru March. The visuals lent by a toy camera like a Holga gave the images the dream-like quality that I was aspiring for, the almost exact representations and flashes of memories. Objects and spaces where a much more stronger representation of my memories fact and fiction in introducing my Father, My watchtower.

While I was growing up, I always saw my father as this mythic presence that exudes a strong aura. It has never escaped my mind while I was growing up, all the weird contraptions and devices, flaring temper, and the difference on how he makes you feel secured and loved. I knew beyond my years that my father, the man I looked up to was way different than the average father that I could remember.

It was late at night, my Father and his brood where in a car that skidded off the road and fell of the bridge. My father then on his adolescence suffered the most of the passengers. He incurred a spinal cord injury, loosing some of his motor skills and sensations below the injury. His bowel and bladder function as well as his reflex erection were all affected by the injury. Having all these but was still able to raise and conceive five children who have now become respectable in they’re own right never ceased to amaze me.

As I slowly became a man myself I understood what he had to go through to provide us with everything that we need with utmost effort. He wasn’t the perfect specimen for a Man, he wasn’t a perfect Son, he wasn’t a perfect Husband, and he wasn’t a perfect Father. With all these frailty and obvious disabilities he has always been Man enough to stand for us and provide us with whatever was needed. And with stories of men with normal disposition succumbing to the pressures of Fatherhood, gave up and leaving they’re family. My father emotionally, mentally, and spiritually towered above us all.

17:31, 01 January 2010

Camera: Holga, Mamiya C220
Film: Lucky 100
Developer: Pa- Rodinal, Jef Jacob
Location: Nasugbu Batangas